Howard Goldblatt (Editor) - Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused – Fiction From Today

It dawned on me that I was being held close by a mass of warm, sweaty bodies. All the connecting doors were open, allowing me to see straight to the back of the train, about a quarter of a mile away, people standing all the way to the end. We stood like horses, staring at one another, breathing into one another's faces. Next to us was a boiler room, so that with the dining-car door locked tight, the car I was in warmed up like one gigantic boiler. The windows were sealed shut, and there wasn't much air to begin with. At every stop, a few more people squeezed on, swelling the ranks of the standing passengers. No one was getting off the train. I had to grip the floor with my feet to keep myself upright, as there was only enough floor space for about half of either foot. I wondered how long I'd be able to keep this up.

A little over two hours into the ride, someone came up with the idea of getting off at the next station and waiting to get on the following train, which would probably be less crowded. Someone else said that was right, seeing as our train had left at ten at night and there wouldn't be anyone else getting on the trains after midnight. Sounded reasonable. But when a group of us climbed down onto the platform at the next stop and asked around, a short, fat platform attendant flatly advised that we get back on our own train. He couldn't guarantee we'd be better off on the later trains. In fact, he insisted that the next train through, the one we hoped to catch, would be even more crowded than this one. The only slight hope was a train coming out five hours later. "On the whole," he said with a wave of his hand, "you may as well stick with what you've got."

When we climbed onto the train again, the conductor asked why we were back. We told him what had happened. He immediately dismissed the platform attendant's remarks as a pack of lies. By then, the train had been moving for ten minutes. Nothing left to do but check and recheck the time on my watch: six and a half hours to go, six and a quarter hours to go, six hours and fourteen minutes to go, six hours and thirteen minutes to go… It reminded me of a long-distance bus trip I'd taken two years before in Henan…

I was sitting right behind the bus driver. Anytime a pig or chicken crossed the road or when we came up on a bicycle rider, he would blow the horn. The horns on those buses are as loud and harsh as they come. Every blast lasted about ten seconds, and then the sound rang in my ears for at least another fifteen seconds. Each time he hit it, I thought my heart was going to heave up out of my mouth. By a rough calculation, I figured that the two-hundred-mile trip would take around seven hours. With the driver blowing the horn about once every two minutes, that meant 210 horn blasts, each ten seconds long, plus the fifteen seconds of ringing in my ears… But why go on? I thought. Ten minutes into the bus trip and my nerves were shattered. What would be left of me after half an hour? I realized I didn't care anymore-my ears had already hardened like iron…

In much the same way, I passed the nine and a half hours of that night numb to all feeling. The train didn't stop until seven in the morning. Just a half hour to go, but I felt sure I'd be able to stand for another nine and a half. Someone stuck his head out the window and reported that the train was temporarily held up.

"Clack." After being locked all night, the dining-car door opened. A conductor gave us an update: the train wouldn't be signaled into the station before ten-thirty. This meant that even though Beijing was only twenty-five minutes away, the train had to stay put for three more hours. No one's eyes registered any disappointment or anxiety, and no one said a word. The interior of the car was silence itself; everyone had to wait and endure. The connecting doors were locked-no one was allowed off the train even though all anyone had to do was walk to the nearest bus stop and catch a bus into the city…

It's a feeling I have, that even now I'm still on that train. My feet seem to be planted on the floor of that railway car, regardless of whether the train is stopped or moving, regardless of whether it's going anywhere at all. I have no way of telling this to my friends in Beijing -that I don't know when that arrival will ever come about…

By that I mean I may have never been to Xi'an at all.

Translated by John A. Crespi

I am a young woman whose job is very mechanical, as mechanical as the hands of timepieces, always making circular motions with the same radius and in the same direction; as mechanical as a fatigued truck traveling invariably down a fixed route. Usually when I am reading the study materials delivered by my work unit, especially articles about the new trends in struggles, I can never remember whether Iraq annexed Kuwait or the other way around or if the Scud stopped the Patriot or vice versa, even if I read the same news item ten times. But I am able to commit to memory all the typos in the articles. For instance, in the lower-right corner at the end of a line, I will easily spot an apostrophe that should be a comma, and so forth. That's what comes of being a proofreader.

This simple work keeps my chaotic mind from making many mistakes, I am glad to say, since I am a daydreamer who finds it hard to play by the rules. Let's say, for example, that the fainthearted son of a cold-blooded murderer accidentally kills someone. When the death sentence falls upon the frightened son, the father, who has always been able to escape the net of justice, mysteriously takes his son's place at the execution ground. This act must be regarded as a mockery of the law, but I will be moved by the loving sacrifice of a brutish father who kills without compunction, until my face is bathed in tears; I will even hold him in some regard.

When I see an accomplished surgeon refuse to treat a class enemy's vvife who is in great pain and in need of help, I am disgusted. My problematic views and a tendency toward aberrant thinking are enough to deprive me of the chance to become a doctor or lawyer.

They say that to be a writer, you must follow even more rules. I know only too well that my deviant thinking and convoluted logic keep me at odds with those rules. Fortunately, I am aware of these flaws and have never expected or hoped to become much of anything.

Yet there may be another possibility. You might happen to share my way of thinking, which means you could interpret my un-orthodoxy as a rule in its own right. Anything is possible.

Dentists always fire Miss Dai Er's imagination. The fantasy begins when she approaches the dentist's office and hears the whir of the drill. As she enters, the sound courses through every nerve in her body. At the same time, in the space taken in by her gaze, countless teeth dance and fly around her like snowflakes. Whirling and spinning, they send forth the delicate fragrance of falling pear blossoms.

At this moment, Miss Dai Er is fantasizing as she sits in dental chair 103, assigned to Dr. Kong Sen, in Hospital 103. Dai Er, twenty-two, possesses a nearly pathological tenderness, charm, and melancholy. A painfully impacted wisdom tooth has brought her here. She looks around carefully: there is a spittoon and a cup on the left armrest; above it are a gadget on an adjustable arm and a small electric fan; directly overhead is a large lamp, like a golden sunflower whose petals move around the patient's mouth; alongside the right armrest is a swivel chair with wheels, on which the young dentist is currently sitting.

He is a reticent young man, tall but stocky and sedate, with focused yet limpid eyes. (Miss Dai Er will never forget his eyes. In the future, she will spot him amid a sea of people by his eyes alone.) His nose and mouth are obscured by a snow-white gauze mask, and it is this hidden part that bestows upon him a space open to imagination and a mysterious, fathomless aura.